We Could Have Taken The Fort

Old forts are one of my favorite places to visit and when we planned our Blue Angels trip to Pensacola NAS I knew I wanted to find time to explore Fort Barrancas.

It was Sunday afternoon before we made it to the fort and even though we'd been camping all weekend and walked a million miles at the air show we were ready to explore.

They have a nice little visitor's center at the entrance so we went inside to look around.

All seven of us.

It's a small room and there were several other visitors inside talking to a park ranger and when we walked in everyone stopped talking. Very quickly the visitors thanked the ranger and left.

We looked around for a few minutes and then headed up into the fort.

As we walked up the hill we came to a very pretty overlook so I asked the Island King to take a picture of my sister and I.

We walked to the overlook and turned around to face the Island King and as we turned I got a good whiff of a very unpleasant smell. It was like smelling campfire ashes and smoke with a little dirt and sweat thrown in for good measure.

As we stood there having our picture taken I told her to hold her breath because I smelled bad. She laughed and said that she smelled bad too and that it must be us together that was making it so strong.

And then she cracked up and said "Maybe that's why those people left the visitors center so fast"

If just the two of us smelled this bad I can't even imagine the gust of foul air that must have followed all seven of us when we walked into that room.

As we wandered the fort I noticed that other people kept their distance. At one point we were in a tunnel with a small family and they stopped, turned around and went back the other way.

I think they decided that a narrow, windowless tunnel was not the place to be trapped with seven really stinky people.

Aside from the fact that we were stinking up the place the fort was really interesting.







The kids were tired at the end of the day and after taking this picture we realized it was time to go.


We might have been tired but I'm pretty sure we could have taken the fort without firing a shot. Smelling bad has it's advantages.

Note to self: Bring Febreeze on next camping trip.

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